Upload/download speeds

OK this is a reasonably confusing area.

You need to establish throughput speeds, I guess you are looking at this already. But basically get a largish download of a single file from your nas to desktop, preferably wired throughout and see what you get.

But there are lot of variables here:

Load on the computer already

Load on the nas already

How full the NAS is

Your network and overhead

Also regards NASes, they are computers at the end of the day and you need to establish ram and processor speeds to get a feel for what speeds to expect.

Then there is network and its overhead. I have gigabit throughout, and mac to mac I can see peeks of 80MB/s but typical throughput is more like 40-50MB/s

for my nas (Qnap TS410) download speed can be up to 70MB/s but typically 40-50MB/s

Other considerations are how your nas is raided, mine is on 10, if you have 5 this can be slower, though typically on the upload.

Upload speed to the nas is always slower as it has to write to two places at least.

Its not even fair to say stream it to a computer, as this will invetably be far far beefier ram/network/CPU than NDS.

Long and short is I am not an expert, but where there is an issue, I would start at the network, then the NAS

Thanks for the reply Gary.

I have wired gigabit throughout. Raid 1 on the NAS (mirrored).

Transfer files between two PC's is fast so would suspect network is ok. CPU and RAM load on the NAS looks fine.

Cant really see an issue which is the reason im asking if anyone else has the same setup who could give me an idea of there speeds for reference.

Hi Foxman

I have a very similar setup to yourself with the exact same issue. Synology Ds212j streaming to the NDX. 24/96 play without any issues but 24/192 will not play without pausing due to buffering.

I am seeing the same upload speed as yourself when streaming to the NDX. 650 - 750 KB/s is typical. The computer and NAS have wired connections direct to the router. I have tried wired and wireless to the NDX but makes no difference to the speed. Playing the same file on the computer plays without issues but shows an upload speed of closer to 1000KB/s and higher. 

Not sure what else to try. 

Sorry. 

Hi David

Well yesterday i installed a different HDD in my NAS and played around with different versions of firmware to see if there were any speed differencies, as i only get on average 15Mbs when downloading flac files to it from my PC.

Anyway after messing around i installed my original HDDs back in and played the same 24/192 album and everything is fine. Buffer was full all through the album. It still streams at around 700 - 800Kbs for it. So no idea what was going on. Maybe just a bad connection somewhere.

Im still only getting around 15Mbs dowload to NAS although this depends on the size of the file strangely.

If you mean upload to the nas, this would be a reasonable speed baring in mind its having to put data over a number of drives.

I tend to see around 17 to 20 upload.

Thanks Gary, that's really interesting.

Synology state 55Mbs download to NAS and 32Mbs upload. I know these are for ideal conditions but you'd think you'd get half that at least.

I must admit it just seems slow to me.

That will depend on the speed of the drives, raid configuration, how full it is, what other services are running on the NAS etc etc.

Mine is supposed to be good for 79MB/s down, but I have never seen anything like that.

I think its like printer manufacturers they are giving you figures based on the NAS being used in the most basic format (JABOD) and on its own in a perfect network etc.

Wish manufacturers would give you real world or average stats. All it does is make you think there is an issue. Still now my NAS is streaming ok i don't mind waiting for it too download.

I always look at small net builder website, they tend to have real world stats for the nases they review

Thanks for the link Gary, that's a bit of an eye opener. Why are the transfer speeds for directories so slow compared with large single files.

Well, I don't know why exactly but it is true, if you transfer multiple files its far slower than the same sized single file.

Hi Gary, I think we will find dor each transfer session of a file there are overheads, these overheads per file or session  are fixed. The bandwidth throughput is fixed. Therefore the more sessions you have the effective data payload transfer decreases by more than  the ratio  of the number sessions. This is is one reason why commercially you can use  network and device network optimisation  products (AAI) like from Riverbed and Ipanema to counter this. Sometimes on consumer stuff the limitation is buffer space in memory rather than raw throughput, so increasing memory on a NAS for example can increase the performance for many small files.

Simon

Simon ive no idea what any of that means, well apart from increase memory - increase performance. Not sure if its upgradable on my Synology DS212j

OK don't worry unless you need to understand why a lot of smaller files is slower than one large one.... However you can increase memory on Netgear NASes and that can improve lots of small file transfers, so it's worth looking into if its an issue for you..

Sadly I believe its fixed in a qnap